Mattie pulled herself up from her chair and threw another log on the fire in the cottage. It was colder than a witch’s tit as her grandmother used to say, and she was feeling every degree in her old bones. She sighed and headed into the small kitchen to fix a can of chicken noodle soup and a cup of herbal tea. She hated eating alone, but this is what her life had come to and she just lived day by day not expecting much and not getting much. Today she had been traveling in her memory banks thinking of the years when she had been a famous model, traveling the world and meeting interesting people. The lover who had shared her bed had been legion back then, but now she was here pushing seventy years old and so alone.

Loneliness consumed her sometimes, but she didn’t know how to reach out to people and try to fix all the years she had been dismissive of the people in Wellmore. She had wanted her privacy and had no time for the small people in this small town……or so she had thought. She indulged in a tear or two as she warmed up the soup, pulling her sweater around her tighter and staring out the window over the kitchen sink. How had it come to this?

The stack of papers on Mimi’s kitchen table was not going to go anywhere and she had promised her high school English honors class that they would have their essays back the next morning. She did this all the time, then regretted it when she got home and had to work into the night grading. She sat down heavily into one of the chairs at the table and set a cup of coffee next to her hoping it would give her enough of a lift that she could stay awake and get this mess done.

When she sat down she picked up the card from her dad who had retired to Florida a few years ago. He had taught mathematics at Wellmore High School for years, and now here she was; same house, same school, same job. How in the world had she let all her dreams of a family and children just fly away along with the years? She hated living alone but she had been so picky as a young woman; none of the boys she dated had been exactly what and who she wanted and eventually they all left her along. It’s what she had thought she wanted, but now as a middle aged old maid who actually did live with a cat called Boots, there were nights like this when she admitted she had made a miserable mess of her life.